The legendary Boeing 747 was a brilliant consequence of six million different parts produced by man and machine around the world. Absent this wildly sophisticated division of labor, 747s wouldn’t exist. Construction of them would be way too expensive.
Which is the point. When people the world over are free to blend their remarkably diverse talents, nothing is impossible. Call the latter trite, but also the truth. The more that production and thought can be divided up among as many specialized people and machines as possible, the more awe-inspiring our achievements will be.
Which is why the protectionist, expensive, and thoroughly unsafe direction Joe Biden is trying to take us is so worrisome. Defending the Biden administration’s recently proposed ban on the imports of Chinese components for automobiles to be operated in the United States, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo asserts that “Cars today have cameras, GPS tracking and other technologies connected to the internet. It doesn’t take much imagination to understand how a foreign adversary with access to this information could pose a serious risk to both our national security and the privacy of U.S. citizens.” Raimondo gets it backwards.
Let’s start with her implied point that theoretically nefarious Chinese interests might use the existence of its components in our cars to sabotage us. Not explained is why? About the “why,” that’s not to say that countries aren’t frequently enemies, and that war at times tragically reveals its ugly self as a consequence of countries being enemies.
It’s all true, which is why it’s so important that the Biden administration’s protectionist, anti-progress, and anti-living standard policies are restrained as much possible. They must be precisely because they’re a threat to our national security. Conversely, the more that Chinese production is part of American production, the safer Americans are from war of the shooting and bombing kind. Which is hopefully a statement of the obvious.
While there are no sure things in life, it’s no reach to say that trade among the producers within nations makes war between those same nations frightfully expensive. The Biden administration, in pursuing a “decoupling” of U.S. and Chinese production, most certainly makes us less safe by dint of it mindlessly lowering the cost for the Chinese of aiming its guns and bombs our way. Translated, people generally don’t shoot at their best customers.
Only for the safety of Americans to shrink even more. To see why, contemplate why Chinese components are so prominent in driverless technology in the first place. It’s there because it’s necessary, because what the Chinese produce results in much better technology necessary to move people about as safely as possible. Once again, the blending of varied talents. In other words, doing best by passengers was and is behind the inclusion of Chinese production in cars that will transform how we get around for the much better, and in ways that make our transportation exponentially safer.
It’s a reminder that if the Biden administration succeeds in limiting collaboration with Chinese producers in the creation of driverless cars, the path to this greatly enhanced state of transportation affairs will have been rendered more expensive, less effective, and worst of all, quite a bit less safe. As the Alliance for Automotive Innovation has already made plain, the Biden administration substituting its own decisions for those of carmakers would put those carmakers in a very difficult spot given the lack of extant supply options that aren’t from China.
Lael Brainard, President Biden’s National Economic Council head, defended the proposed ban with the empty comment that “We can’t allow for a situation where our auto supply chains are dependent on China.” Which is shameful, anti-progress, and by extension anti the American worker. Think the 747 to see why, and then think of trade as the greatest foreign policy concept mankind has ever known to really understand why.
